


The Seven Seas

by ChaosKirin



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Aliens, Gen, Science Fiction, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:01:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24560485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaosKirin/pseuds/ChaosKirin
Summary: Aliens crash through the roof of the barn where Queen is busy working on their next album. There's no reason for the aliens to be there, but they seem inclined to argue a bit before revealing their true intentions. And it seems it's up to Freddie and The Boys to save the day. Or else.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

The morning started like any other: At quarter past noon, and with beer and potato chips for breakfast.

"Fred, I want to go _home_ ," Brian said, hand on his forehead, leaning back in his chair. Roger stretched his leg out and attempted to tip the chair over; the back collided with the wall and Brian shot him a grumbly look.

"No. We're staying right here 'til we're done," Freddie replied. "And I would say we've been productive thus far--except for all the complaining."

They wouldn't be _done_ until Freddie said they were, which could be today, or tomorrow, or three weeks into the future. With his _Mercurial_ temperament, he'd named himself well. That's something none of the four would ever argue over.

John, typically, said nothing.

Roger flipped over in his chair, reclining upside-down with his bleached hair splashed across the dusty floor. Out of all of them, Rog felt the crushing boredom the worst as they _sat and sat and sat_ and thought about lyrics for a good chunk of the day. He just had a different way of dealing with it; while Brian complained and John entertained himself within the recesses of his own mind, Roger caused Trouble _._

"Oh, Roger," Freddie said. "Do sit up."

"I'm gettin' the blood to my brain," he replied. "So I can think of your stupid songs."

"If they're stupid, we're not using them," Freddie said.

"You let the car song through," John muttered under his breath, after which Roger grabbed a handful of wood chips and attempted to launch them--while still upside-down--across the room. He performed an unintentional backflip out of the chair and crashed to the floor.

Where he remained for some reason.

"Entertaining," Brian observed. "I still want to go home. I've got things to do. My thesis--"

"Oh, your bloody thesis. You're a rock star now, Brian!" Freddie exclaimed. He stood, paced across the barn, stepped over Roger, flailed his hands for effect, then paced back. "You don't need a doctorate if you're a rock star!"

"I thought we were to be rock gods," Roger provided, insinuating that a god was somehow superior to a star.

Freddie supposed he had a point. "Yes, yes, we're getting there. Patience!"

Asking this lot to have patience was like asking an elephant to fly. Like asking a fire to burn cold. Like asking a monkey to type the full works of Shakespeare with both hands tied behind its back. All possible, when one considered how very exciting and unpredictable the universe was... But still vastly implausible.

Something very small and very loud crashed through the barn's roof, landing mere centimetres from Roger's outstretched arm. Roger jumped to his feet with the alacrity of a twelve-year-old non-smoker and stumbled away, knocking over stools, a bandstand, a whole table, and a random chicken as he went.

The chicken, perturbed, scuttled from the barn.

John sat up, his face perfectly passive as Freddie asked, "What the fuck was that?"

Brian stood, creeping toward the shimmering object. It appeared frictionless with all its sparkling silver splendor, and as aerodynamic as the most advanced American war devices. Oblong and saucer-shaped, it sat off-kilter within the barn's floor, its leading edge plunged clear through the rotting wood and stuck soundly within the dirt. It wiggled a bit as if to free itself, then seemed to deflate in defeat as if sighing.

It was no larger than a standard record.

"Aliens, probably," John said.

"Oh, _aliens!"_ Freddie poo-pooed, swatting him with the back of his hand. "It's clearly a toy. A frisbee or somesuch. Roger, go outside and see if--"

The frisbee whirred and hissed, a door opening and consummately vanishing as it did so. A bright green light shone from within as steam and fog poured out of it like water.

"Is Spielberg here?" Roger said. "Is he having us on? He's making a movie, you know. Offered me a part--"

"Oh, he did not," Freddie said. "Hello in there? Hello? Is it aliens?"

"Well, they wouldn't be aliens to _themselves,"_ Brian griped. "We'd be the aliens to them."

"Bother your semantics," Freddie said, kneeling next to the oblong contraption. When he poked it (as he could think of nothing better to do with it), his finger slid off the surface as if it were made of particularly slippery ice.

"Well don't piss 'em off," Roger said, kneeling next to Freddie and poking the thing as well. "Whoa. I can't touch it."

Indeed, it was covered in some sort of _shield,_ which reflected all attempts at poking, no matter how vehement. Whenever one of them thought to touch it, it shimmered with a glowing rainbow of energy before repelling the contact entirely. It was neither cold, nor warm, nor _anything at all._ However, Roger could make the shield wiggle with a sort of frustration if he touched it in two places, and when Freddie added his fingers to the mix, the whole saucer seemed to burble in scandalized protest.

"I can't help thinking that's a terrible idea," John said.

"We should kick it," Roger suggested.

"That's exactly what I meant," John replied.

As Roger stood and drew back his leg to give the thing a good kick, Brian said, "It's not a football."

Defeated, Roger stomped the ground with the very foot that had been just about to launch the thing back into the sky. "Then what's it doing in our barn?"

Brian opened his mouth to answer, then his eyes dulled with the abject inability to answer Roger's inane inquiry. "What kind of question is that? Do footballs inherently belong in barns where you're from? If something enters a barn, does it become a football?"

"Well... Kinda? If it can be kicked?"

Meanwhile, the little door on the saucer-object remained open. Freddie wondered how much more mist could pour out of the thing before it was empty. Or perhaps it contained its own mist generator and it would continue to spew forth a cloud of noxious green gas until evicted from the barn. "I actually think Roger may have the right of it," Freddie said, detecting the faintest hint of ozone. "Exciting as all this is, I don't want to be poisoned."

Roger reeled his foot back again.

Fortunately, the occupants of the saucer picked that moment to show themselves. A single moment later, and they might have been stepping out into earth's atmosphere, tumbling end over end in the worst result of first contact ever written about in any science fiction in history.

Thwarted again, Roger collapsed into his chair and crossed his arms.

The aliens--for that's the way Freddie had begun to think of them--appeared as silhouettes against the burning green light from inside the saucer. Unsurprisingly, they were tiny, each barely the size of a paperclip or perhaps even smaller. A walkway extended in front of them as they squirmed out into the barn's dim light; the creatures meandered down it, leaving a trail of slime behind them. Vaguely slug-like, they were nevertheless adorned with at least half a dozen tentacles each, which were in turn adorned by an incredibly ridiculous amount of jewelry. Enough to rile Freddie's jealousy at any rate. If only he had more places to put shiny things, he could be a much happier man!

There were three of them. The tallest one spoke:

"ARE YOU THE QUEEN?"

Freddie blinked. The alien repeated: "ARE YOU! THE QUEEN?"

"We're... Queen?" Freddie tried. "The band. Queen."

"HAIL QUEEN BAND. THROUGH THE RADIO CHATTER OF YOUR ILLUSTRIOUS PLANET, WE HAVE DETERMINED YOUR LOCATION AND SEEK AN AUDIENCE."

John muttered, "I'm sure this is going to go well."

"I'm not sure you understand," Brian said. "We're not _the_ queen. Or any queen, really. We're just--"

The aliens seemed undeterred. The tallest one interrupted: "NONSENSE. YOU HAVE PRODUCED MORE RADIO CHATTER THAN ANY OTHER ENTITY CALLING THEMSELF A QUEEN ON THIS PLANET. WE DEEM YOU THE SUPERIOR OF ALL OF THEM. YOU WILL NEGOTIATE ON BEHALF OF YOUR PLANET."

One of the smaller ones, who seemed to be wearing glasses on his protuberating eyes, asked, "WHAT IS YOUR PLANET CALLED?"

"They've been listening to our radio chatter," John began, "and they don't know what the planet is called?"

"Er... This is earth," Brian supplied.

"OF COURSE IT IS EARTH," the smaller alien said. "ALL TERRESTRIAL OCCUPIED PLANETS ARE MADE OF EARTH. WHAT DO YOU CALL YOUR PLANET? WHAT NAME?" He pulled out a very tiny, very adorable starmap from one of the flaps in his skin. Freddie didn't know whether to be awed or disgusted.

"That's--" Brian tried. Puzzled again, he scratched his head, as if the aliens had made a perfectly reasonable point.

In the silence, Roger clarified. "The planet is called earth."

The three beings conferred with each other for some time, their slimy tails wriggling behind them like rain-saturated worms. Occasionally, their stalk-eyes would flick around to fix the quartet with a glare--at least, Freddie thought it was a glare. It was hard to tell when one didn't understand the intricacies of alien expression.

Finally, the visitors turned. The one holding the starmap said, "EARTH IS A TERRIBLE NAME FOR A PLANET. WE DEMAND TO KNOW WHICH IDIOT NAMED IT."

Never mind that none of this made any sense whatsoever... Brian still engaged in a heated argument with the aliens about the virtues of a planet named _earth,_ and how no one had ever actually named it. That's just what it was called. Roger found that hard to believe, since the idea had to have come from somewhere--and after all, the people of earth hadn't always known there were other planets, which meant they had to _discover earth was a planet at some point,_ which meant they would have had to name it. When asked why, Roger shrugged and said that if humans were presented with something to name, they would inject their opinion onto it without questioning whether or not they should.

Brian supposed that was logical, then he further supposed that the person who named earth would certainly be dead by now, which the aliens thought was probably better for everyone.

"And just what is your planet called?" Roger asked, once the argument exhausted itself. Freddie thought the whole point of the alien visit probably wasn't to discuss the names of their respective planets, but here they were.

The other shorter being stood up just a bit taller. He was wearing different colors than the other two, although those colors were so random and chaotic that no one in their right mind could describe them. He seemed for all intents and purposes to be a diplomat of sorts. After a wiggle of importance, he said, "DENMARK, OF COURSE."

No one said anything for quite a while, then everyone started speaking at once. Except for John, who was quite content to smile at the absurdity of it.

"You're just from Denmark?" Roger asked. "How are you so short? And slimy?"

"I'm sure it's lost in translation," Brian observed.

"They've come billions of kilometers all to tell us them come from a place called Denmark!" Freddie exclaimed.

"NO, NO, NO," the alien said. "IT'S WHAT ALL CIVILIZED ENTITIES CALL THEIR HOME PLANET ON A MAP! SHOW THEM, WOULD YOU?"

The other short alien--the one with the glasses--lay its starmap out on the floor and opened it to a rather obscene size. It shouldn't have been possible for so much paper to fit inside one pamphlet-sized document, but the creature continued to unfold it and unfold it and unfold it until it covered an enormous portion of the dirty floor. Moreover, the stars elevated themselves just above the paper in a spectacularly impossible three-dimensional layout. Freddie couldn't help an awed "Oooh," of admiration.

John, sarcastically, added "Ahhh!"

"YOU SEE?" the tallest alien said, pointing to an X on the map. As it poked the location with a tentacle, it lit up with a vast trove of information--exact location, atmosphere type, composition of the rocky surface, current radio traffic, and climate. Probably. Freddie didn't actually know, as he couldn't read their language.

"Okay, what's it _really_ called?" Roger asked.

"OH, YOU COULDN'T POSSIBLY PRONOUNCE IT," the diplomat said.

"Don't tell me what I can't pronounce," Roger insisted.

The aliens conferred again, this time for quite a while. When they turned, the diplomat cleared his throat and announced something that no human would ever be able to pronounce: a cacophony of squeals and _thisksks_ and clicks and sub-sonic whistles and grunts and whoops and probably a boat horn or two.

Roger narrowed his eyes, considered for a moment, then opened his mouth and _screamed._

"IMPRESSIVELY CLOSE," the diplomat said, as one would comfort a toddler who also happened to be a horse.

"IN ANY CASE," the leader said, his eyes spiraling around in what might have been an eyeroll, "WE CANNOT EXCHANGE PLEASANTRIES WITH A PLANET NAMED EARTH. IT IS SIMPLY PREPOSTEROUS. WE DEMAND YOU RENAME IT."

"But as we've said before--" Brian tried, but the leader held up a remarkable number of tentacles to halt him.

"YOU ARE QUEEN BAND," the leader said. "CLEARLY IT IS YOUR RIGHT TO NAME THIS PLANET."

Freddie, rather half-asleep from the long day they'd already suffered (at his whim), imagined it would be easier to give the visitors a name now, then sort things out later. After all, nothing political could come about as a result of this visit. The aliens were far too tiny to be any sort of threat. And if he just gave them a name, he could get back to writing lyrics with the others and no harm would be done.

Without any sense of impending doom despite his foreshadowy thoughts, Freddie searched around the barn until his eyes fell upon an open, half-stale loaf of bread. "The planet is now called _Rhye,_ " he said, adding the _H_ in his mind since it sounded more dignified. "Yes, Rhye. Has a nice ring to it, I think."

"The moon's called Chicken Shit," John said.

Brian elbowed him.

"THEN ON BEHALF OF DENMARK," the leader said, "WE DEMAND THE UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER OF RHYE AND ALL ITS INHABITANTS! IMMEDIATELY!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aliens discuss the terms of Rhye's surrender.

To John, nothing was more important than the cool rationale of _logic._ Therefore, he found it a constant source of unfortunance that nothing logical ever happened around the other three members of Queen. He'd come to accept it, which is why--he thought with smug affection--he always came to expect the most illogical outcome of even the most mundane situations.

Hence, aliens.

John was and had always been an _I-Told-You-So_ type of fellow, with the advantage that he never had to speak the actual words. Case in point, he merely arched his eyebrows and Roger said, "Oh, _shut up,_ John!"

It saved John many hours of gloating.

He shrugged and smirked, nodding at the tiny aliens, which now had tiny little weapons drawn in the most adorable display of force anyone on earth had ever seen.

"I think you might just want to get back into your ship and go back to Denmark," Freddie said. "Earth--er. _Rhye,_ I mean. Rhye is pretty happy without alien overlords. I think. You guys think?"

He looked at the others. Roger and Brian nodded their assent.

John agreed with the others. The last thing earth needed was another set of conquerors, considering all the world leaders currently vying for control. The planet had plenty of problems already without adding aliens into the mix, and while aliens running things might be _interesting,_ it would ultimately be more of the same.

However. He'd come to expect the most absurd, most inane outcome of _anything._ And while an alien invasion by toenail-sized creatures was absurd enough, even _more_ absurd would be if they could follow through on their threat. Outright rejecting their tiny takeover might do more harm than good as far as John was concerned. Not that he expected that they could refuse anyway. It would be just be their luck if the tiny aliens were also inexplicably deadly.

In the end, he shrugged.

"You _want,"_ Roger began, pausing for ineffect. "You _want_ alien overlords?"

"I think," John said, pausing for actual effect as he nodded to the gun-brandishing Denmarkians, "that we should hear what they have to say."

"WE," said the leader, and John was getting tired of all this needless pausing, "DEMAND RHYE'S UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER! IMMEDIATELY!"

"You'd said," John remarked, kneeling so he was closer to the aliens. No longer impassive, they were scowling with a most ferocious sort of ultra-frown, which involved an almost ninety degree bend to their stalk-eyes. They meant business. "How about if you tell us what surrender means. To you."

The diplomat hopped off the walkway and jammed his tiny gun into John's knee. He probably should have been afraid--at least a little--but it was hard to drum up the proper amount of respect for a weapon the size of a pushpin.

As a side-note, John was beginning to think that the diplomat was less of a diplomat and more of a strong-armer. In any case, he certainly didn't have diplomacy on his mind and seemed very content with just murdering everyone and blowing up the planet without pausing for any pleasant negotiations whatsoever. Seemed like a positively primeval method of conducting interstellar business, but what did John know? He'd never actually conducted any interstellar business, and had, until today, been unsure as to the existence of life outside of earth. For all he knew, this was exactly proper.

"SURRENDER!" the diplomat/strong-armer screamed again.

Despite the weapon pressed to his knee, John dared again to respond, "we've never actually surrendered before. It's not that we're being difficult. It's just that we don't know how."

"YOU WILL SUMMON ALL THE PEOPLE OF EARTH TO THIS LOCATION," the leader said. "AT THAT POINT THEY WILL BE DESTROYED HUMANELY AND QUICKLY, WITH MINIMAL SPLATTER."

The pause that followed lasted several preposterous seconds.

"Right," Roger said, grabbing their ship and lifting it out of the barn's floor. Several terrified voices screamed from inside as the leader and the glasses-wearer pointed their tiny weapons at him. Unintimidated, Roger spun the ship on one finger, like a basketball or a top.

John thought that was a bit excessive.

"I don't mean to be rude," Freddie said, obviously meaning to be rude. "But I'm not sure your weapons would do even the _least_ amount of damage. Are you sure it was earth--er. Rhye--you wanted to invade, and not a planet with a much tinier population? Someone more your size?"

In response, the diplomat aimed his tiny laser at a passing chicken, and the chicken exploded in a cloud of feathers and assorted gore.

Freddie yelped. Brian wobbled a little on unsteady feet before sinking to the floor. Roger put their ship down. Carefully.

"I THINK OUR WEAPONS WILL DO JUST FINE," the leader said.

He did have a point. If one tiny gun could destroy a chicken so thoroughly, it would probably do a similar amount of damage to something larger. If nothing else, the little weapons were interesting, and John wondered whether it would breach surrender protocol if he asked to take one apart to see how it worked.

"Did he just explode that cock?" Freddie asked.

"It was a hen and you know it," Brian replied. "You just wanted to say 'cock.'"

"I don't need an excuse to say 'cock,' darling," Freddie said, at the same time Roger sighed, "can we all stop saying 'cock,' please!"

The point still stood, so John asked, "would your weapons do the same to a human, do you think?"

"OF COURSE THEY WOULD," the leader shouted, full of his own pride. "THEY ARE SPECIFICALLY CALIBRATED TO OBLITERATE ALL LIFE ON THE PLANET."

John scratched his head. "Then why not just nuke us from orbit?"

"John!" Roger hissed. "That is _not_ the question you should be asking!"

It was of interest, though! If they had these powerful weapons capable of destroying all life on earth, one would think it would be easier--if not more efficient--to just point and shoot from a couple hundred miles away. It would probably be more painless, too, what with all the people on earth simply not expecting to be destroyed on this rather pleasant Tuesday morning. And at least most people would die doing what they loved--or at least doing what they _tolerated._ John did suppose some people were working, and most people didn't love their jobs.

What a sad fact of reality.

And at this point, dear readers, I will spare you a whole paragraph of aliens screaming in capslock and simply summarize their answer: They didn't nuke the planet from orbit for several reasons: first that chasing humans was just _too exhausting._ They'd tried chasing the sapient species on the last planet they conquered, and they were still mopping up _that_ mess even a hundred zorgits later. Roger asked what a zorgit was, to which the aliens replied: a roundabout loop in space-time wherein all intelligent species could measure time without the use of a star. Brian thought that made sense.

The second reason was that their weapons were just slightly out-of-tune with the universe, and if they blasted an entire planet, they could open up a hole in reality, into which all realities would be sucked, destroying the entire space-time continuum. In theory.

John asked why they didn't test that theory. Roger smacked him with a newspaper.

John then asked why the aliens had a pronounceable word for "zorgit," but not a pronounceable word for their own planet. This question was cut from the story entirely for being a god-damned plothole that the author didn't want to explain.

"I guess," Brian said after the rather long-winded explanation, "my only question would be _why?"_

"AH!" the leader said. "RHYE SHALL BE OUR RESORT PLANET! A BEAUTIFUL GEM IN THE MILKY WAY GALAXY WHERE OUR PEOPLE MAY RELAX AND ENJOY THEMSELVES!"

John, preferring that no more of his questions be cut from the story, resisted asking how the aliens found a name for the Milky Way and not a name for the planet. Perhaps radio chatter was selective.

"AND!" the diplomat went on, jamming his adorable weapon into John's knee again, "WE SHALL BUILD A HYPERSPACE WARP TO OUR NEW RESORT PLANET SO THAT IT ONLY TAKES SECONDS TO REACH IT, AND NOT A WHOLE YEAR!"

"SHOW THEM," the leader said, waving a tentacle or two at the alien with the glasses.

The glasses-alien pulled another folded document from another skin fold and spread it out on the barn floor. It showed the planet, now adorned with a whole lot of strange structures and attractions, none of which made the remotest amount of sense. Australia had simply been removed for whatever reason, while another land mass had been created halfway between Africa and South America.

What must have been the hyperspace warp circled just outside the planet. The aliens had drawn a smiley face on it.

"Impressive," said Freddie. "I really, truly mean that. Can't you do this somewhere else?"

"NO," the leader replied. "THIS IS THE PLACE. I CAN TELL."

"Well then you must give us a chance to save our planet. A... show of force," Freddie said.

"A SHOW!" the aliens sang all at once. The leader continued: "A SHOW! YES! TO WELCOME YOUR NEW OVERLORDS AND BOW TO YOUR OWN DESTRUCTION. I ACCEPT. HOW MANY ZORGITS WILL IT TAKE TO PREPARE?"

"Not a show--" Roger started.

Freddie elbowed him. "Uh, how many Rhye days is a zorgit?"

The aliens conferred, then the leader said, "WE CAN GIVE YOU FIVE RHYE DAYS. WE LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR SHOW. THANK YOU FOR FREEING OUR SHIP FROM YOUR FLOOR."

As John, Freddie, and Brian all gave Roger a dirty look for allowing the aliens their freedom, the three slug-like creatures climbed back onto their ship and flew it out through the hole in the roof, leaving both the star map and the recreation plans behind.

Dazed, everyone stared upward at the sky until Brian said, "Well, now what do we do?"

John had a few ideas, none of which involved putting on a show. He wondered if NASA had any mass transport shuttles prepared to just whisk everyone on the planet to a safer location, then he remembered that NASA was funded by the American government and had a good chuckle.

"Well," Freddie said. "I think I have an idea. It'll be risky, but I'm absolutely sure we're up to the task. The alien said--"

"Which one?" Roger asked.

"Does it matter?" Freddie returned.

"Yes! Look, we can't just call them all 'alien,'" Roger said. "Gets confusing."

"It's not like we _exchanged pleasantries_ ," Freddie scoffed, hand to his chest in a rather affronted manner. "They said they were here to exchange pleasantries before everything went _weird._ I should have liked to."

John very strongly felt that if none of them could pronounce the name of the alien planet--despite Roger's good ol' college try--they probably wouldn't be able to pronounce the aliens' individual names. He could have said so, but listening to Freddie go on about how rude the little beings were for not introducing themselves was entertaining at the very least.

Brian said, "We can just assign them names. For our own purposes."

"All right. Well the tallest one was the leader, so I say we call him 'Freddie,'" Freddie said.

Roger grabbed a handful of sawdust from the floor and rubbed it into Freddie's hair. "You're not our leader. You're just a git."

"Let's call him 'Leader,'" Brian suggested diplomatically, as Roger and Freddie slap-fought like children. "And the one with the maps. We can call him Glasses."

"Fine, fine," Roger said. And the other one was more of a git than Freddie, so we can call him Arsehole."

No one had any objections.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Plan Comes Together. Also known as: The author needed some filler.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry these chapters are so short. This was originally outlined to be a short-form story for a zine when I was estimating I'd have about 4k words to work with. There's actually quite a bit of filler just to make it more "appropriate" for posting here on Ao3. The payoff will be in the next chapter. Thanks for reading so far!!

Freddie spent the next several hours (and hours and hours) pacing the barn and outlining a plan. For the sake of suspense, said plan will _not_ be described here, although, wonderful readers, it might be described as amazing and daring! Filled with intricate precisiveness and wild creativity! _Genius!_ And most importantly, incredibly unlikely to succeed!

Somewhere around the five o'clock mark, Roger ordered a pizza which never arrived due to the rather remote location of the farm. He spent the next excruciating hour complaining about his insatiable hunger, until John raided the chicken coop and fried some eggs.

Brian was torn between being appalled and relieved. After all, the chickens ought to be allowed to keep their eggs... since they _made_ them, after all. Roger asked Brian what he thought cakes were made of, so Brian swore off cakes for at least the next couple days, at least until he could scrub the vision of affronted chickens out of his mind.

John said "at least they aren't being vaporized," which was quite sobering and put everyone directly back on task.

It should be said that the appearance of aliens on earth had a rather profound effect on Brian, who, up until that point, only _hoped_ aliens existed. Ever the pragmatist, though, he never believed earth would make contact with the various other denizens of the universe until far after he was dead and buried. After all, relative physics still reigned supreme as the dominating theory of _everything in the universe_. And with no way to travel faster than the speed of light, aliens simply couldn't reach it from wherever they made their home.

Except they had. And they'd dropped by like a very undesirable relative during Christmas celebrations--everyone wanted them gone, but they had to be appeased and placated first. Perhaps even force-fed copious alcohol until they passed out in a peaceful stupor, while the kids drew fake marker mustaches under their noses.

"Do you think," Brian said to John after the four of them split into two groups. "Do you think they'd let me question them about the stars? How they got here? Where they're from?"

John blinked slowly.

"It's _not_ a stupid idea to ask!" Brian insisted. "Just because they want to raze the planet doesn't mean I have to stop learning. And if they really think I'll spill all their secrets then they must not want to destroy me very much. I can't tattle if I'm dead. Don't you think?"

"If I say yes, will you get back to work?" John asked, flicking the end of a soldering iron at him.

Brian grunted and went back to poring over the star map Glasses left behind. He _vastly_ preferred absolutes, whereas Freddie's "plan" just happened to be chock full of conjecture and dumb luck and a good measure of stupidity. Absolute stupidity, which Brian supposed counted as an absolute, just not the kind he wanted. That made him nervous, and therefore talkative.

"It's just..." he said as he tried to figure out Denmark's location in relation to an earth star chart. Thankfully, he never left home without one, just in case. "They could have the secrets of the whole universe stowed away on that little ship of theirs."

"And if they did, and you end up dead?" John asked. "What would you do with them?"

"Well, I'd know."

John rolled his eyes. He'd set aside the soldering gun in favor of a welding torch, and so he was able to dramatically flip the black welding mask down over his eyes to signal the end of conversation. The git. Brian looked away as John ignited the flame.

"I don't even know if it's in the right bloody hemisphere," Brian muttered to himself, returning to the star map. He couldn't read the alien language scrawled out across it, plus it appeared the aliens preferred some odd derivation of base-8 math... which meant he couldn't even parse their coordinates. He was sure it made sense to _them,_ but in the moment, it was infuriating.

That meant he had to manually study every sector of the alien map, then line it up to the earth map. If he could figure out the first sector, he might be able to proceed. The problem was parallax. After all, why would the aliens make a map meant to be viewed from earth?

Damn parallax. Why couldn't all the species in the galaxy just decide on a standard map!

Meanwhile, John got to build... Well. Brian wasn't entirely convinced it wasn't just another cat tree for Freddie's cats. Freddie assured everyone this little bit of the plan was critical, though. And it was up to Brian to find the _proper angle_ of whatever it was so he could--

Ah. Wait a minute.

I'm sure you're all very bored by now, and I wouldn't blame you. After all, this is just filler really, since one can't just go from aliens arriving to aliens being defeated. The point is, all the great writers in history somehow universally decided that a story can't be told without costing its readers vast amounts of time when they should be doing other things. Say, filling their washing machine with lemonade, or ironing their socks, or stacking teacups on a sleeping cat. Or watching egg whites dry as they drip down the siding of your irritating neighbor's house. Not that the author has ever done that.

In order to create suspense and drama, most writers masterfully fill their stories with plot dynamics. However, this plot is _fairly_ cut and dry as far as stories go, and the author is not masterful in any sense of the word, so she's just decided to waste your time with this rather pointless filler text.

However, as you've been reading this, Brian May--brilliant scientist that he is--has been using his time with all the wisdom and efficiency one would expect from a future astrophysicist. As John continued to weld his rather confusing scaffolding, Brian chanced upon the _exact_ miniscule plot detail he could utilize to make sense of the alien map. Thusly did he shout "Eureka!" ending this particular section of the story.

You're welcome.

\---

"You can't just write a whole song in one day," Roger said.

"Well, I don't intend to. We have _five_ days," Freddie returned, straightening a bit in his seat and looking down his nose in haughty confidence. Into the phone, he said "No, I won't hold. I'm Freddie-Fucking-Mercury--What do you mean _who??"_

The line went dead. Not because the other side had hung up on him, but because rats had chewed clean through the phone line again. Bother of all bothers. If only he had his _cats_ here, the damnable rats wouldn't be such an issue!

"Roger, be a dear and chase the rats off again, would you?" Freddie asked. When cats weren't an option, Rogers did just fine, and as a bonus, they didn't leave rodent corpses on your pillow in the morning. At least Freddie hoped they didn't. He probably should have asked.

"Five days or no," Roger said, returning from his chase, "the pressure must be intense. I mean, if it's going to work, it has to be perfect, doesn't it? No room for error. And you have to trust not only yourself to remember the lyrics, but you also have to have _absolute faith_ in your bass player, and your guitar player, and your drummer who's a bit of a flake."

"Just a bit?"

"Last I checked."

Freddie tut-tutted. "It'll work. Look, it's a short story, and the author always writes happy endings. What makes you think it won't work?"

"Well, I have to be disagreeable, don't I?" Roger asked, flopping down on the couch next to Freddie. "Let's see what you've got so far."

Freddie handed over the notepad.

After a dozen quiet minutes of earnest contemplation, Roger said, "All you've written is the title."

"The Seven Seas of Rhye," Freddie declared. "It's a good title! I was thinking a sort of... Bar song, I guess. Maybe a--"

Roger was shaking his head.

"Oh, _what._ We've been bleeding out all our creativity lately." Freddie stood, hands on his hips. "There's none left, is there? You're right. Five days to put together a song and _get people here_ so they can bear witness to my amazing plan? It's not long enough. We'll just have to cancel! There shouldn't be consequences for that."

"There probably won't be," Roger agreed. "Just the annihilation of humanity, I guess. Nothing major."

Freddie pursed his lips. Yes, that was a problem. He'd have to power through. As always.

"Look," Roger said, pulling a comic book out of his back pocket. He always carried one, _just in case._ We've got aliens on earth.

"Rhye."

"Whatever. We've got aliens. Make it _epic."_

Freddie paged through the comic book. Although the cover seemed to hint at an epic space battle far into the future with high-tech space suits and murderous monsters, the inner pages had been replaced by porn. Porn Freddie didn't even particularly like. "Roger," he said, holding up the least scandalous image he could find.

"Well, you weren't supposed to open it." Roger at least had the wherewithal to appear sheepish as he snatched the magazine out of Freddie's grasp. "If it gets boring in the barn, do you think I'm going to want to read comics?"

"I'd hope that you'd be _writing_ like we're supposed to be," Freddie said, curling his nose up as Roger tossed the magazine on the end table. "Not--"

He paused as inspiration struck, and a single phrase popped into his mind.

_I Stand Before You Naked to the Eye._

The basis of the song began to form around it. "Listen," Freddie said, handing Roger the phone, which was still not connected to anything. "First, I need you to take over securing the advertising to get us a proper audience. Make some calls. Get the people here. Can you do that?"

Roger nodded. "And?"

"Yes. Second, I need you to never, _ever_ tell anyone that I got the idea for this song after looking at your raunchy porn."

Roger smiled. Narrowed his eyes. "Put _I'm In Love With My Car_ on the B-Side to Bohemian Rhapsody and you've got yourself a deal."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story turns into a songfic as our heroes fight earth's dangerous (but tiny) invaders the only way they know how.

The magnitude of a concert can be outlined by several things. 

First, the talent. In the case of Queen, this was largely a non-issue, as they were four of the most talented people on the planet. To be fair, this was Roger's assessment, and Roger possessed an ego roughly the size of a stack of thirty blue whales. For the purposes of comparing size, it might have been more logical to select something land-based, such as school buses or football fields. However, in dealing with an ego so large, one must delve into the outright ridiculous or downright strange--sometimes both at the same time. Therefore, whales.

Roger's ego was only surpassed by Freddie's, which no scientist has ever been able to measure. 

Second, pizazz. No concert performed by Queen could ever be any less than a spectacular free-for-all of pyrotechnics. A smorgasbord of sparkles... Each properly calibrated to draw the most admiration from the crowd. Professionalism demanded a panel of lights so bright and hot that it could melt the cheese right off a hamburger from a whole kilometer away. If the entirety of the fire brigade wasn't on standby, the show just wasn't worth anyone's time. On the other hand, if the venue burned to the ground in the middle of the concert, it made for particularly bad press. It was a very fine line. 

(There are other, more mundane things that go into making a concert a huge success, but this is not a bedtime story, and boring the readers to sleep would be far from ideal.)

But most of all, a crowd defined the magnitude of the concert. Without a crowd, nothing else mattered. That was Roger's expert opinion, at any rate. Which meant on the day of Queen's impromptu, unplanned, desperate, world-saving, hail-Mary concert, Roger Taylor delivered. 

Though the fallow field stretched for acres in every direction, it was full to capacity, with people pressing in shoulder to shoulder, eliminating any space between them. Queen's stagehands--those they'd been able to rouse from their vacations--struggled to keep the crowd away from the makeshift stage. This task was hampered by a rather massive electronics rig that jutted out into every opportune space... much like an exploding flan. 

John and Brian bent over it, whispering to each other as if they were the best of friends. If one could hear their words, though, one would understand that these were not the hushed intonations of friends--barbs abounded; when Brian called John an incompetent buffoon, John retorted by telling Brian in no uncertain terms that he was a technologically inept upside-down tortoise who couldn't wire his way out of a paper bag. When Brian noted that no one would need to wire their way out of a paper bag and that only an uncivilized rutting salmon wouldn't just tear through it to escape, John insinuated something terribly rude about Brian's dear mother. 

In other words, they weren't friends at all. They were brothers. 

"Five minutes," Freddie said for the thirteenth time. Delays, as always, remained a trick of the trade. "Is this thing gonna work or not?"

"The aliens are in place?" John asked. One of the lighting scaffolds dimmed, casting the shadows under his eyes into positively evil relief. 

"Yes. All of them. Leader, Glasses, Arsehole, and their entire crew." Freddie gestured up onto the far corner of the stage, where they'd built a tiny set of bleachers for the occasion--so tiny that Roger had to squint to see them. The slug-like creatures undulated over them like... Well, like an exploding flan. One must never fail to re-purpose a simile where appropriate, after all. Their shining silver ship lay just behind them, reflecting the light of the setting sun.

John looked at Brian. Brian looked at John. Neither of them trusted each other, and yet they both trusted each other implicitly, with their very lives. They were and would always remain a true paradox in every sense of the word. 

"You guys can make out later," Freddie said. "Is the thing ready?" 

Brian rolled his eyes. "I can say with absolute certainty... That is, with nearly every resource available to us... Ah, there's a VERY strong likelyhood--and a very TINY possibility that... I guess what I mean is that were I a betting man, which I'm not. Well, I am occasionally, but there's a time and place for it, and it's probably not here. Let me put it this way. I believe, with every fiber of my being--" 

As Roger wondered if Brian had an off switch, John interceded: "We're as ready as we'll ever be." 

"Good enough," Freddie said. 

Brian thanked John for his ability to summarize. John patted Brian on the shoulder. They all climbed onto the rickety stage as the crowd cheered. 

The aliens also cheered. Probably. Never easy to tell when you were sitting behind a drum kit several meters away from something approximately the size of guitar pick. Freddie acknowledged the would-be invaders with a nod, put his hand over the mic, and turned to the others. 

It was never a good idea when Freddie put his hand over the mic on stage. 

"I've changed some of the lyrics, darlings, for this special occasion." 

Roger, who would be singing backup, paled enough for Freddie to see, even in the shadows. Freddie smiled and flicked a dismissive hand. "Don't worry, dear. Everything still rhymes." 

"But... rehearsals!" Brian argued. "Our chance at--!" 

But Freddie had already turned back to the crowd, his microphone live. "We've got something special for you tonight I think you're going to love. A new song!" 

He waited, as all great showmen did, for the crowd to both cheer uproariously and fall to silence. As they were taking just a bit too long to get to the silence part, Roger smashed one of his floor toms as close to his own mic as he could get, creating the wiggle of noise juuuuust prior to a sound system emitting feedback. It had the desired effect. 

With a devious grin, Freddie sat at the piano and stared daggers at the aliens. In the few seconds between the stage hand whisking away the standing mic and the sound crew activating the mic at the piano, he said, "This is what you wanted. This is what you're gonna get." 

Ominous. 

Even from the opening piano riff, the crowd was hooked. On their feet. Cheering. And Freddie sang the Seven Seas of Rhye for the first time in public, with some modifications which would never be heard again: 

"Fear me, you lords and lady creatures.  
I descend upon your earth from the skies.  
I command your very souls, you unbelievers.  
Leave me what is mine--The Seven Seas of Rhye."   
Not bad so far, Roger thought as he eyed the special red button just to the side of his bass pedal. Out of all of them, he alone could be trusted with the proper timing, and it had to be perfect. If it wasn't perfect--

Well, it would probably still be okay. But Freddie thrived on perfection, so perfection it was. 

The second verse got a little weirder. 

"Can you hear me, you slugs and sluggy counsellors?   
I stand before you naked to the eyes!  
I will destroy any snail who dares abuse my trust--  
You'll leave me what is mine--The Seven Seas of Rhye." 

Roger, whose eyesight was very bad to the point where sometimes he couldn't even be sure whether he was staring at his own drums or a series of giant, empty bowls, glanced over at the alien bleachers. He thought--he hoped--they were no longer cheering. 

He eyed the red button again. Not yet. First, he had to try to keep up with Freddie's lyric alterations; at the last minute, he decided maybe it would be better to loudly hum into his mic instead, then--either out of charity or mischief--Freddie kept the lyrics exactly the same as he'd written them.

"Sister... I live and lie for you.  
Mister... Do and I die.   
You are mine, I possess you.   
I belong to you forever." 

Roger didn't hear the next verse. At all. Brian took over singing along, and Roger played on shoddy muscle memory--After all, he'd only just learned the song, so no one could blame him for missing a strike or two on a cymbal.

If Roger knew anything, though, he knew timing so implicitly, so instinctually... and he knew exactly when... 

"I'll come out alive," Freddie sang. His arm blazed with hidden pyrotechnics as he pointed directly to the aliens' home planet of Denmark. 

And Roger smashed the button next to his bass pedal. 

Freddie sang, "Be gone with you, you small and shady conquerors," and the sky exploded with the most precise of direct hits. As Brian had calculated, Denmark lay at an amazingly fortunate and perfect angle to explode from earth's northern hemisphere. At least, that's what Freddie wanted them to think--for a Queen explosion, this one was rather small, but it had to look real. 

Despite their tiny size, Roger could hear the aliens' audible gasp even over his drumming. 

Unwilling to break his stride, Freddie continued.

"Give out the good, leave out the bad evil cries.  
I've challenged the mighty Leader and his arsehole--  
And taken what is mine.  
The Seven Seas of Rhye!"

Although everyone had doubts that the ploy would work given its absolute simplicity, the aliens still piled back into their ship, their slimy backsides squirming over each other like maggots in roadkill. As the ship lifted off to retreat, the stage crew covered their escape with a helpful volley of fireworks that exploded just a bit too close. 

Roger turned his eyes to the sky just in time to see the silver saucer streak away into the sunset.

\---

"Am I going to wake up at some point?" John queried hours later. Long after the concert ended and the crowds had filed out, Queen still sat on the stage as their crew cleaned up around them. "I feel like that should have been a dream. Was it?" 

"I was thinking maybe we were dead," Brian answered, after which the two of them shared a private chuckle. 

"No, we're not dreaming and we're not dead," Freddie said. "We've single-handedly saved the planet from annihilation, all thanks to yours truly." 

Roger sighed. He knew this whole thing would go right to Freddie's head. Any attempt science made at measuring his ego now would backfire tremendously. People would die if they ever tried to figure out Queen's prodigy of a singer, and they would have been asking for it. No one could pin down Freddie Mercury and hope to survive. 

"They'll be back," Brian said, after which John applauded him and handed him a certificate printed on expensive parchment. It was already framed. 

Bran scowled. "This says, 'award for the most obvious statement ever,' and it's sealed by the prime minister and the queen." 

"I've had that in my suitcase for the past year," John said. "Figured tonight you'd say something stupid enough for me to give it to you." 

"But the queen," Brian stammered. John shrugged. 

"Be that as it may," Freddie said, "Captain Obvious is correct. They'll be back, but I suppose that's a problem for the future." 

Roger very much thought that was the right way to look at things. After all, the future wasn't real. It couldn't hurt them. And with every day that passed, the future technically got farther and farther away. By right of its very existence, the future could never be the present, and Roger preferred to live in reality. 

As a dubious corollary, Roger also believed the past didn't exist, insofar as he couldn't get drunk in it. So maybe he wasn't the right person to ask.

"So now what?" Brian asked. "What do we do?" 

With a smile and a flourish, Freddie said, "We play, darling. We play." 


End file.
